The message seemed to come both from Bill Clinton and from classic Edward Kennedy. Like Mario Cuomo in 1984, he summoned up the vision of the immigrant who embodies America's values; like Jesse Jackson at his best, he summoned up the vision of the figure with the odd minority background who is the essence of the American dream. Like Bill Clinton, and in line with the Kerry campaign's convention script, he delivered the message that George W. Bush has divided the country and that the Democrats can unite it again.
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This message served Clinton well in 1996, when his foil was Newt Gingrich's "angry white men," who were facilely conflated with the criminals who bombed Oklahoma City – a message that Old Media was happy to help deliver. At this point in our national history, it is a deeply dishonest message. George W. Bush in 2001 and 2002, like Harry Truman in 1947 and 1948, forged a new foreign policy in response to unanticipated threats. But unlike Truman in 1947 and 1948, who was supported by his domestic rival Thomas Dewey and the bulk of the opposition party, Bush was opposed at every turn – from the public employee union provisions of the Homeland Security Department to the Iraq war resolution – by a large, and the most articulate and determined part, of the opposition party.
Now Obama on Tuesday night, like Clinton on Monday night, said that the way to get rid of partisan division is to install the party that has vociferously promoted partisan division – that insists on the "Bush lied" theme despite the facts that the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, the bipartisan 9/11Commission report and the report of the British civil servant Lord Butler have all refuted the "Bush lied" argument – and to oust the party that sought national unity but was denied it. It is like the man who murdered his mother and father and threw himself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that he was an orphan. The Democrats, having stirred up partisan turmoil and political division, now seek power on the grounds that they will eliminate them.
So perhaps it will be. Obama's Chicago-based political consultants, media man David Axelrod and political operative Peter Giangreco, both assured me in the corridors of the Fleet Center that Obama had written his own speech, and I have known them well enough and long enough to believe them; my own brief conversation with Obama earlier this year makes me believe he is entirely capable of this. The speech was in fact a work of considerable art, and one which elicited from the delegates a much stronger and more enthusiastic reception than Edward Kennedy's. Old Media was not watching: the old-line broadcast networks had zeroed out Tuesday night, and will presumably be able to present only bits of Obama's brilliantly constructed speech on Wednesday and, maybe, Thursday. It will be invisible to most television viewers. It sets an even higher bar than Bill Clinton did for John Kerry's speech, but most people will be unaware of that.
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